Live Like Me Syndrome

Listen, y'all. Pert near every city slicker I done come across is tickled to death over this here new book, Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier. While I can't claim to have done read it, I have done read a mighty collection of other people's articles about it. And as it happens to turn out, every dang one of those preachy articles was written by a city slicker.

Meanwhile, y'all, out here in the fields...we don't particularly agree with Mr. Glaeser's thesis. Here in the backwoods, down in the holler, where the girls are corn fed, and the men have red necks...we try not to judge wealth by how "rich" we are. Perhaps, we might earn a pinch more money if we moved to a city. But then we wouldn't own a "yard" or get to "see stars at night" which are two things that out here in the boonies we call an important part of God's bounty.
Certainly, the number of "educated" people might be higher in cities; rural areas particularly seem to be places where "less educated" people can get by. You don't need a fancy "P-H-D" to farm or to work at the Tyson plant. So the argument that cities "are smarter" is sound, but the argument that cities make us smarter is not. Why, just the other day I turned on "Real Housewives of New York City"...boy I tell you those women have to be about the dumbest people on God's Green Earth.

Mr. Glaeser seems to suggest that folks in the city are "greener." I am guessing that poor boy isn't being literal, because nothing is greener than growing corn. Maybe he is talking about that new-fangled concept of "carbon footprints." He might be right, I don't know. I'm not from Hahhhvud like he is. But then again, I've planted a tree or two in my time. But I'm just a poor farm boy from the Breadbasket, what do I know?

But then again, ol' Mr. Glaeser seems to be ignoring some facts. Sure, country bumpkins like me are dumber than edified city folk. But we also ain't nearly as likely to be addicted to painkillers. Out in the country the crime rate is lower. Unemployment is lower. The recession was less painful. Do you hear about the foreclosure rate in the country? I humbly submit, city slickers, that your city is suffering while your kin are moving to North Dakota farm country where the jobs are. If Mr. Glaeser thinks city folk are happier...he better think again.

Look y'all, Mr. Glaeser is as entitled to his opinion as I. But until I hear that he has spent a few quiet evenings sitting on a country farmhouse porch watching the sun set, and heard the cackling howl of coyotes a'runnin' the deer around, he can keep his city-loving where it belongs. Once ol' Glaeser has spent a week workin' the land, sweating in the fields...and then settling down in the evening to a cold one and the paper, I ain't gonna believe a word he says. Seems to me Glaeser thinks he's got all the answers. Maybe he just don't know the right questions.

You just don't get country if you ain't been country.

One more thought: Glaeser calls cities "our greatest invention." Apparently, he's never heard of ants, termites, or bees.

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